SOURCE: "The Child in the Text: Autobiography, Fiction, and the Aesthetics of Deception in 'Without Stopping'," in Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 32, No. 3/4, Fall/Winter, 1986, pp. 314-33.

In the following essay, Moss attempts "to locate the aesthetic strategies of (Paul) Bowles's aversion to introspection in Without Stopping."

Paul Bowles's autobiography, Without Stopping, has received relatively little attention since it appeared in 1972. What slight attention it has received is critical. Paul Metcalf has recently called Without Stopping "a disappointment" and "an emptiness," saying that "It is hard to imagine how a man who can write as well as he [Bowles] does . . . could indulge in so much unrevealing personal trivia. One can only assume that it must be for money? .. . or Fame? .. . or, simply, notice?"1 On a more generous note, Gore Vidal, in his introduction to Bowles's Collected Stories, while calling "the memoir . . . pleasurable for those who can read between the...